The annual conference of Research Committee 19 in the International Sociological Association

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The annual conference of Research Committee 19 in the International Sociological Association -  Opening by the Norwegian Minister of Labour Ms Hanne Bjurstrøm

Ladies and Gentlemen – good morning!

I will start by expressing my appreciation for being invited to open this conference, and also, to convey my gratitude to NOVA and the organizers for giving me the opportunity to share some thoughts on poverty with this group of distinguished international scholars.

Let me start by saying, that to me, the fight against poverty is important from three, somewhat different points of departure:

The first is the normative. It is about the fundamental values which guide our actions as political decisionmakers.

The second is the welfare state perspective: It is about how we preserve, manage and reform the comprehensive system of welfare rights which has been developed in countries like Norway.

The third, of course, is how we respond to the present economic crisis – the worst since the inter-war depression. How do we prevent that present increases in unemployment, especially among Europe’s young, results in a lost generation relegated to a life in poverty?

From the normative perspective, and to all socially responsible human beings, the fight against poverty as well as against all other forms of human degradation is, in addition to securing peace, the primary objective of politics.

Fundamentally, and inspired by the American social philosopher John Rawls, the quality of a society should be judged by the living conditions of those worse off.

Even though Norway is among those countries with the lowest recorded levels of poverty, as long as there are members of our society living under intolerable conditions, there are too many!

The fight against poverty is not about reducing a number. It is about eradicating a phenomenon by preventing it. Second, the political movement that I represent, social democracy and the Norwegian Labour Party, was from the very beginning – and we are celebrating our 125^th anniversary this week – founded on a very concrete analysis. Namely that poverty is a phenomenon created by societal factors. And thus, that poverty can be fought by political action which reforms the society.

To say this to you is close to insulting you. But you also know, that explaining poverty by reffering to fate, genes and bad luck, or to individual moral deficiencies and laziness, are sentiments which, from time to time, surface as significant popular restrictions on what can be achieved with welfare policies in a democracy.

I am convinced, that the wide acceptance for social interpretations of poverty in Nordic countries, is an important, and often overlooked factor in explaining why we – in this corner of the world – have managed to develop such comprehensive and state centred – and still popular – welfare systems.

The comparative research that you and others have done, by and large, confirm that the Nordic Welfare Model, with our emphasis on the three pillars of

• universalist social citizenship
• a commitment to full employment
• and welfare services as social investments

is the model which has proven to be the most effective in keeping poverty levels down.

Therefore, to me, defending and preserving these basic features of our welfare model, is and should be, the very backbone in a policy to keep poverty levels at a minimum.

This position is not self evident: It stands in contrast to a policy of developing separate programs targeted at the poor.

“Separate programs for the poor tend to be poor programs”, as Richard Titmuss once said. And even if targeted programs may improve the economic position of people, they will always tend to underscore stigma and reinforce social exclusion.

To me, fighting poverty in a society like the Norwegian, is not only about economic resources. It is as much a fight for social inclusion, participation and dignity.

The present economic crisis is a major threat to all our ambitions of keeping poverty as low as possible. And history tells us that one policy beats all other measures – and that is a sound, macro-economic policy for full employment. Since the financial crisis struck our economies in the fall of 2008, a comprehensive counter-cyclical policy has been put in effect in Norway.

And, I must say, with good results. We have managed to keep unemployment under 3 per cent, and an overall labour force participation rate close to 80 per cent.

I assume that when I say this, you may all think that this is not much of an achievement, given the resources of the Norwegian state. But, there is no law saying that oil-rich societies always do well.

Rather the opposite. History is full of examples of the so called “resource curse”, and of political regimes which have wasted away benefits given to them by nature.

The very fact that we have accumulated benefits from the petroleum sector in a government fund, and not used the state oil-revenue to finance tax cuts, explains why we have been able to respond as we have done to the economic crisis.

Full employment is alpha and omega in the fight against poverty. All experience shows, that if unemployment begins to rise, it’s the most vulnerable segments of the population who are hit first and hardest.

The objective of reducing poverty to its absolute minimum, must guide our actions both in a long and a short term perspective.

To use a metaphor – to fight poverty in a society like ours, is like organizing a defence: The first line of defense is education. Throughout the history of the Labour Party, the equal reight to education – irrespective of social and geographical background, irrespective of the economic position of parents and family, has been one of our paramount objectives. Hard facts show that the best medicine against being hit by poverty, is education, training and skills.

The second line of defense is a sound macro-economic policy which in the short run fights unemployment through active counter cyclical measures, and which, and this is important, in the long run promotes job creation through industrial restructuring.

The third line of defebse is a wide set of welfare state measures to assist those who, for some reason, do not get a job through the ordinary ways into the labour market. To me, welfare state handing out of cash benefits to people unable to sustain own income though paid employment or social insurance, is a necessity from a humanistic perspective.

But, it is also a sign of policy failures, that there, to be loyal to my defense-metaphor, are holes in the three defenses. Therefore, the lions share of my daily job is to – constantly – improve and reinforce the barriers against poverty.

We struggle with problem of too high dropout rates from school. Also low and inadequate education and skill levels among immigrants is a challenge we have to work harder with to overcome.

I have paid a special attention to the problems that in particular young disabled have in getting a relevant job. They face problems both in terms of overcoming prejudices as well as employer resistance.

I have been criticized for not liberalizing the labour law regime – to allow for more temporary employment contract. But to me, creating a second class of employees, is no contribution to social inclusion. And as far as I can see, there is no convincing empirical evidence that support any link between labour market deregulation and improved employment for people with disabilities.

Poverty and unacceptable life quality in an advanced welfare state, is a very complex phenomenon. More often than not, several factors inetact at the individual level; poor education health- and abuse problems, discrimination, weak social network. Given this insight from social research, the single citizen with problems must be helped by a wrelfare state with a high and flexible capacity to combine its different measures and programs. This need for a more efficient organization to meet the actual combination of needs of the population, was the fundamental reason behind the grand reform of our welfare state which have been implemented since 2006 – the NAV-reform.

What we have done in this reform, is to merge the old institutions of social insurance, the employment measures and the residual social assistance scheme into one coherent welfare organization.

It has been the most radical re-organisation of our welfare state ever. The institutional reform was necessary. The old system had outlived itself.

But redesigning institutions it is not enough: It has to be combined with a second insight from social research and scientific evidence, namely that social investments, not cash benefits, is the key to a sustainable and significant reduction in the number of poor people.

This goes in particular for fighting child poverty: The key is to qualify, active and to create  employment for the parents, and to provide for the family unit and the children, access to welfare services which enables them to live a life as close as possible to that of other citizens.

This policy shift, from money transfers to social investments – ‘from cash to kind’, is, I will argue, well grounded both in the respect for the resources that are within every individual, as well as in empirical experience.

But to be frank, it alsoencounters a lot of resistance. Less emphasis put on cash benefits is often portrayed as a strong belief in neo-liberal incentive thinking. More emphasis put on the capacity of individuals to help themselves through adequate activities is depicted as moralism and ‘work-fare’.

One of the themes that you are addressing at this conference is to what extent ideas and policy recommendations diffuse from a transnational level to national policy making.

Therefore, I will end by pointing to two such ideas which, I think, have had a significant impact on the poverty discourse in this country.

First, there is no doubt that the extension of the concept of poverty from being a pure economically defined situation to also include social factors – and the concept of social exlusion – has been very influential.

This again, is an important part in the shift from cash-programs to social investments.

Secondly, international definitions of poverty lines – from OECD and EU – has also been imported. We have no tradition for official poverty lines in this country. Now, Statistics Norway regularly produces data on the number of individuals below these different poverty lines.

Both ideas have, beyond doubt, been a positive contribution to poverty research as well as on debates on poverty. But the combination of them have, I think, produced a paradoxical effect: The concept of ‘social exclusion’ conveys the necessity of using a broad policy approach to fight poverty successfully.

But this insight is undermined by the frequent use of, and reference to, the narrow economic definitions implied by the poverty lines.

In practical policies this implies that when we shift resources from cash payments to the supply of social investments, the number of poor – measured by the poverty lines, rises, even though the value of the services provided is significant.

Therefore, I will end by handing a challenge over to you: As policy maker, I need your insights and help to define the target groups of an effective anti-poverty policy. I need the assistance of research to develop better instruments to measure policy impact, so that successful policies can be reinforced and policy failures avoided. And, not the least, I need you to develop methods that the combined welfare effects of benefits in kind and cash can be assessed in total.

So, with these words, again, thank you for inviting me to open this conference. And good luck with your important work!